Leaves and Memories

It was autumn again, so it was time to put the leaves up.

She used some from last year, but most were ripped and faded and forgotten in far corners of her too-big house. So, as always, she sat down and cut out the shapes from red and orange and yellow construction paper.

She was one of the only ones who remembered what leaves really looked like. Most of the others who dutifully hung the seasonal decorations cut out triangles for leaves, or rectangles, or even circles. Some, the older people like her, could still cut out the shapes of leaves and pumpkins and apples. One by one, their hands became too arthritic to hold the scissors. One by one, the people who kept the flame burning burned out themselves.

Sure, the young and intrepid politicians debated every day what to do, drawing up unrealistic plans for the future and generally trying to keep everyone’s spirits aloft. But as they grew gradually more hopeless every day, she decided that the real heroes were the men and women who came out every season to put up decorations from a time before. Of course, not many agreed, but that was because they hadn’t lived in a time that was happier.

Snip, snip, snip, went her scissors, tracing memories of a time long past, a time when there weren’t any decorations for the seasons because autumn would paint over summer then freezing winter would descend, then spring would poke its green shoots out and summer would arrive again in a flash of long-anticipated heat. When there were leaves on the trees. When there actually were trees, for that matter, or any plants at all, and oxygen generators weren’t needed at all, and the temperature of the world changed every season.

Every piece that fluttered down to the metal table was an echo of the leaves that used to fall and cover the ground with a fiery blanket that was swept up by the wind and blew beautiful fire around the ankles of young women in stylish fall sweaters, and the air was deliciously crisp and cool. 

Every rustle of paper was a whisper of nostalgia for her, for the days when she would rake leaves into piles that would soon be destroyed by children who leaped into the colorful mounds, for the magical Hallowe’en nights when there was still such a thing. 

Finally, she was done, and she placed all her flaming leaves into a plastic container (everything was plastic or metal now) for tomorrow, the first day of autumn. 

She woke up the next day to the beeping of her alarm clock, the faint rays of sunlight filtering through the smog that filled the atmosphere, and the constant ache of loss inside her that she had accepted was there to stay.

She remembered when mornings weren’t like this, when the sunlight shone loud and clear through a window that wasn’t caked with dust and grime. When the birds chirped and the sounds of life filled the air and people knew how to be happy in a world that was happy.  

This world was quiet except for the hum and roar of the machines that had been the downfall, the machines that the humans had made. This world was dark and grey and empty. This world had no life except for the humans that had taken it away. 

She ate the bland vitamin-infused slop that was provided every morning like clockwork and then took the box and some paste, strapped on her plastic mask with its double filters, and stepped outside. 

Her feet made prints in the dust that always covered everything, despite the valiant efforts of the few street cleaners left. The dust slithered through the tiniest cracks in hard-to-reach places and remained stubbornly. According to the books, there was a time when part of the world had been like this, but that had lasted only ten years. This was an eternity with no light at the end of the tunnel. 

The prints would soon be blown away by the wind, in an endless cycle that never seemed to end, that never really would until the last person standing was gone and there was just the dust that blew through all the empty shells of places that were, and the quiet flicker of sun rose and fell and rose and fell until the end of time itself.

There were fewer people outside than last year. Fewer people who saw any purpose in tearing down each season’s decorations and replacing them with new ones, fewer people that even knew what the seasons were. This was what the passage of time did.

She stuck her leaves to lamposts, mostly, but also fences and walls and wherever she could find. She tried to spread hers out as much as possible, seeing as there were less this year, but she knew her efforts were in vain. She carried on anyway, because what else was she supposed to do?

When she was finished, the flicker of sun had moved all the way across the sky. She paused on her porch for a moment, staring out into the grey landscape and drawing hope from the flickers of color that were scattered everywhere. She tried not to think about how there had been so many more last year, and how fast hope was fading. Humanity was surviving on hope, now, and the less there was the faster the end came. (The end of what? Humans? They were already well into the end of life itself.)

She went inside, knowing that she was going to have to cut snowflakes in a few months, then flowers for spring and green leaves for summer, knowing that she would keep doing this as the seasons changed, until the day she died.

Every season she watched as less and less people came out to decorate, until she was the only one left and people spoke of a hunched old lady who came out at the turn of every season to put the decorations up.

And when she finally stopped, too, there was no one in the world left to put the leaves up every autumn.